


Throwback Tuesday

by KayinTruth



Category: DCU
Genre: Gen, Gift Fic, Gotham City Police Department
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-18
Updated: 2016-09-18
Packaged: 2018-08-15 19:39:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,257
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8070127
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KayinTruth/pseuds/KayinTruth
Summary: “Was reminded recently of my junior year of high school. Wanted to thank you again ~Janet” 
Gift fic for Unpretty (xposted from Tumblr)





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Unpretty](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Unpretty/gifts).
  * Inspired by [untitled](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/230314) by Unpretty. 



One of the detectives is touching things in Janet’s office. The other sits in the chair across her desk, writing in a notebook, pulling her attention back every time she considers demanding that the other stop touching her stuff.

It’s just little things – a fingertip on the edge of a picture-frame of her university graduation –

“Would you say you knew Mr. Wayne well, Ms MacIntyre?”

“Doctor,” Janet corrects absently, flicking her eyes back to the seated detective. “And actually, Detective… Brant, was it?” she asks, with insincere sincerity.

“Grant, actually,” he answers.

\- the other leans over to poke at a flower in the arrangement her assistant had set out the this morning -

\- “Dr. MacIntyre?”

“No,” she answers. “He was a sophomore when I was a junior.”

\- a picture on her desk, tilted up slightly so that the detective can look at it without ceasing looming over her -

“And yet, I have a report here from one of his classmates that he assaulted another student for you.” 

Christ. Here it comes. The questions she’s been anticipating for the last 20 years, right here, right now. 

“He did,” she answers. 

Don’t stutter, Janet.

“...I asked him to.” 

“You asked him to?” the one looming over her repeats. 

“Yes,” she lies, twisting around and meeting the detective’s eyes squarely. “That asshole told everyone at school that we’d had sex. The slut-shaming was intense. I lost all my friends and couldn’t show my face in class without getting nasty comments whispered at me.”

“So you asked Bruce Wayne to beat up your ex?” Detective Grant asks.

“I didn’t say he was my ex.” Janet’s voice is too controlled to say that she snaps, but her voice is cold and hard and the words are spoken without hesitation. Deliberately, she lets out a long, deep breath. “He came to find me one afternoon. Found me out in the parking lot. He’d heard the rumours, wanted to know if there was anything he could do to make things better.”

“So you told him to beat up the quarterback?” Detective Grant asks, again.

“Yeah,” she admits. “I told him he could beat Tyler’s face in, and not stop until I told him to. I didn’t really think he’d do it, but,”

“But he was happy to help out?” the other detective, the one who’s name she hadn’t even been offered, suggests. He’s behind her now, still standing. 

When they’re gone, she’s going to rearrange her office to make sure no one can do that again.

“What is this about, Detectives?” she asks, instead of answering. In her mind’s eye, she sees Bruce Wayne’s face again, the utter and complete calm, _you want me to stop?_ stripping off a blood spattered shirt, scrubbing at his blood spattered face. 

“Just building a profile, Dr. MacIntyre,” Detective Grant says. “Please go on.”

“I wouldn’t say he was enthusiastic,” Janet lies. A creepily calm face saying _I won’t know who he is unless you point him out to me_. Had that been it? Had he said it that way? “He wanted to make me happy. I had to goad him a little bit. Not much; like I said, the slut-shaming was... bad.”

“So, he, what, had a crush on you?” the question is a harsh, sceptical sound from behind.

“I think so,” she answers without turning her head. Bloody napkins in a trail down the hall. 

“And then what?” 

“And then I traded on the reputation of having been his girlfriend for a few months to get into a sorority at a good college,” Janet says. Very correctly. Very according to the picture she wants to build in their minds.

“You know, most people I interview are a lot less forthcoming about their crimes, Ms MacIntyre,” Detective Grant says, tapping his pen on the page of his notebook. “You are aware that coercing a teenager into committing assault is a crime, right?”

“Yes,” she answers, although she hadn’t, exactly. “I also know the statue of limitations is up. And to be frank,” she adds, waving a hand at the framed degrees – Bachelors of Science, of Medicine, of Psychiatry - on the wall “I didn’t get any of those without going through some counselling. I’m not proud of what I did, officer. But I was hurt, I was angry, and Bruce didn’t say no.”

The detectives – the other moving out from behind her – stare at her consideringly for a while. She meets their eyes, one after the other. 

“Did you have other questions, Detective?” she prompts.

“… No,” Grant says, snapping the book shut and standing. “Thank you for your time, Ms MacIntyre. We’ll call you if we need your help again.”

“Doctor,” she repeats, frowning. “And I’d appreciate if you’d make an appointment next time. I prefer not to make my patients wait unless it’s absolutely necessary.”

“Of course,” he answers, in a voice that makes Janet doubt they’ll do any such thing. “Have a good day... Doctor MacIntyre.”

“You too,” she murmurs as they close the door.

Her hands are shaking, her heart is pounding. Did they see? Could they hear? She needs call Bruce. She needs to tell him. Warn him. She needs to-

She stops herself. 

She needs to see her next patient. And the one after that. And the one after that. She can think about what to do then. 

*

She settles on a florist. 

She’s wary of calling, because maybe she’s watched too many spy movies – probably has, in fact – but she doesn’t want to implicate him in… whatever it is that’s going on, by calling him on a tapped phone. 

A long time ago, in the 20 years since he beat a boy’s face in to save her some ( _a lot of_ ) trouble, she decided Bruce was probably suffering from some kind of untreated PTSD at the time. 

Surely someone would have complained, would have caught him if he’d been torturing small animals, or beating up teenagers, or whatever else since high school, if it had been happening. 

Janet had rationalized the complete lack of consequences as school-wide collective shock and the kind of localized privilege that the extremely rich have among the general public. 

He’d never touched anyone else out of turn again, in the entire time she’d been in school. Nor even the few years after, while she’d been keeping tabs through her frenemies’ younger siblings. 

Even now that she knows that ‘psychopath’ isn’t a real diagnosis, she doesn’t think it fits. 

So, no calls. No paying a visit, either, in case she’s being watched. 

He has children now – adopted. No wife - and wards and a veritable coterie of models. And that butler, who’d picked him up from the mall that one time. He’s still around, according to a quick google search. 

She can’t talk to the butler, for the same reason she can’t talk to Bruce. Can’t talk to his children or his wards or the models in case they can’t be trusted.

_You’re being paranoid, Janet._

Two detectives had appeared in her office with no call ahead, asking about the time Bruce Wayne beat the shit out of a boy who cried slut. 

_Still paranoid._

_Probably._

So she sends flowers, with a tasteful card. 

_“Was reminded recently of my junior year of high school. Wanted to thank you again ~Janet”_

Too subtle? She’d never thanked him the first time. Maybe he’d call her. She could invite him out to lunch to catch up. 

Maybe he wouldn’t call.

Maybe she’d never hear about this again. 

She sincerely hopes it’ll be that.


End file.
